


The Backroom

by witchfire24



Series: The Doctor and the Captain [2]
Category: The Arcana (Visual Novel)
Genre: Aftercare, Anal Fingering, Anal Sex, Angst with a Happy Ending, BDSM, Blood As Lube, Blood Kink, Bottom Julian Devorak, Consensual But Not Safe Or Sane, Deepthroating, Doggy Style, F/M, Face-Fucking, Female Apprentice (The Arcana), Fluff and Angst, Gender Dysphoria, Humiliation, Knifeplay, LITERALLY, M/M, Masochism, More angst, Pegging, Praise Kink, S&M, Sadism, Sex Magic, Sub Julian Devorak, Whipping, but they work through the angst, in a magical way, mostly - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-30
Updated: 2019-08-18
Packaged: 2020-07-27 09:07:07
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 10,264
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20043448
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/witchfire24/pseuds/witchfire24
Summary: Julian’s relationship with Asra was dysfunctional, the Apprentice already knew that; but she doesn’t know quite how bad it was until she assumes Asra’s form and reenacts the worst of it.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> To be clear, a female Apprentice magically makes herself look like (and somewhat become) Asra. If that kind of gender-bending is a sensitive topic for you, I encourage you to avoid this fic. There’s some dysphoria. I don’t want to be triggering to anyone but that’s the entire premise here. Please read the tags!

We have been sitting in the little room we’ve fixed up as a joint study for almost an hour when I speak.

I don’t want to break the silence, but I know I have to or I’ll lose my nerve. I’m at the desk, sorting herbs into bags and bottles and pouches. Julian is stretched out in the armchair, skimming through the book he’s using as research material for the play he’s writing. He’s in just his billowy white shirt and knee-length breeches, bare feet up on my herb chest, and his sharp features are almost soft in the candlelight. 

“I saw Portia in the marketplace today,” I say, trying to ease my way into the delicate subject I really want to talk about. “I invited her over for tea but she had to get back to the animal rescue. She’s coming to dinner on Sunday.”

“That’s good,” he says absently, turning a page. “Is Nadia coming too?”

“I hope not. I love Nadia, but neither of us are exactly cooks, Palace-level or otherwise.”

“I cook!” he says indignantly. “Name one person you know who makes a better porridge than me!”

I roll my eyes. Julian’s specialties consist of barely-edible food he’d learned to make while serving aboard that pirate ship he talked about so much. 

“She’ll learn to love the hardtack and boiled fish,” he promises.

I snort. “I still haven’t.”

He lays a hand on his chest. “You wound me, my darling magician.” He squeezes his eye shut, then opens it, letting it bulge, then blinks rapidly. “Dammit.”

“Still working on crying on command?” 

Julian gestures at the book in his lap. “The hero here cries every three pages. Now, the heroine in my play doesn’t cry, she weeps. Weeping is the expression of a soul writhing in torment, and you know my heroine’s tragic backstory. As if having her foot eaten by a lion wasn’t enough, her mother sold her to the mercenary horde after she broke her favorite vase, and then twenty years later, after becoming leader of the horde, he finds out that his brother fell into the Pit Of A Thousand Sorrows during one of campaigns and has emerged as a walking, talking skeleton who—”

Listening to Julian talk about his play is always amusing, especially when he starts bouncing monologue ideas off me, but I’d been steeling myself up for this all day and I’m not going to be fobbed off, not even by the promise of watching him stride around the room talking to a skull.

“Portia said Asra and his parents are doing well at the palace,” I interrupt before he can fetch the skull off the bookshelf. 

“Yes, I’m, uh, I’m glad. I met with them two days ago. Nadia’s aqueduct initiative.”

Right. I’d forgotten about that. 

“Where did you all meet?” I ask casually. “The garden? Near the fountain? A whole palace to roam around in, and everything seems to happen at the fountain.”

“The library.” His eyes are back in his book. “Ha, look at this. ‘The Prince strode through the door, his armor glinting in the torchlight. ‘Unhand him, you foul fiend!’ he demanded in a voice ringing with bold authority. ‘Never!’ cried the Duchess, her emerald green eyes glowing with the fierce determination so characteristic of her people. Unbidden, a tear sprang to the Prince’s eye at the ice-cold tang in her voice—’ So much for bold authority, eh? Good luck defeating the Duchess when you’re dehydrated, am I right?”

Normally I can listen to him read all day, as he’s like a one-man play, complete with different voices for different characters, but I don’t want to waste the groundwork I started to lay. “I saw you and him, both at the fountain and in the library.” 

“Me and whom?”

“Asra.”

“Spying on me, I see. I’m flattered.” 

Sometimes when I plan my words they come out of even more confused than had I just let them flow naturally. “I mean I had a vision of you two a while back.”

He wrinkles his long sharp nose and I immediately feel guilty for having ruined a pleasant evening. “Us two…cooking dinner? Picking flowers? Going to the theater?”

“Why, did you do those things together?”

He picks at the long silk bookmark, wrapping it around his ring finger like a second wedding band, tugging it, smoothing it before he answers. “As if! He could only dally with me so much, you know, before becoming tainted himself.”

“I saw your first time. In the backroom.” I waggle my eyebrows with an exaggerated shudder, trying to use humor to get past the bitterness in his voice. 

Julian’s nose wrinkles again, but his voice is wry. “I’d have thought we made a handsome pair, if nothing else. Good material for a voyeur.” 

“That wasn’t the issue.” I swallow and glance down to the bags of herbs I’m labeling. “Besides, the vision cut off before it got to the juicy parts. Double entendre intended.” 

He snorts. “Maybe you can get your money back?”

“Well, I’ve got a good imagination, so…” I wink. I remember Asra licking the blood from Julian’s hand, remember Julian’s quiver of pleasure, the eager look in his eye, the hitch in his voice, and feel a tingle spread from between my legs even as I hate the thought of my Julian with anyone else. “Do you remember, back on the sloop in Death’s Realm…”

“How can I forget? Best strawberries I’ve ever had. And I’m still trying to find a comparable hat for you, my dear Captain—”

I bounce a bag of myrrh off his forehead. Perhaps keeping things light was the wrong tack. “You called Asra a kinky bastard.”

“He _ is _ a kinky bastard.” 

“…Faust was never involved, was she?”

“What the hell?” He straightens up, taking his feet off the herb chest. Easily as it is to fluster him, it’s not easy to shock him, and I wish I were in the mood to enjoy the look on his face. “What did he tell you?”

“I mean…in my vision, Asra told her to stop choking you or you’d think she liked you.”

He chortles. “By the seven seas, your mind’s deeper in the gutter than mine! Asra’s a kinky bastard, but not _ that _ kind of messed up. She squeezed me for telling him to stop sitting around daydreaming instead of finding a, er, a cure for the plague, and then for fun a few times. I almost died. Kinky bastard thought it was hilarious.” He seems to like saying the words _ kinky bastard _. The words sound queer in his Nevivonian accent, his affectedly polished baritone lending them an incongruous dignity. “Kinky bastard,” he says again, shaking his head. 

“And you liked it. The kinky bastardness.” 

He winks, smirking. “After what we did last night, my dear kinky non-bastard, that shouldn’t be news to you.” He leans forward out of his armchair, stretching over to place a long cool hand on my forehead. His wrist still bears rope burns, something I feel mildly ashamed of having allowed to happen. “Are you all right, my dearest darling magician? Shall I fetch the leeches? I got a fresh batch in this morning.”

I slap his hand away. “Stop joking for five seconds, Julian—”

“Do you _ want _ me to wither and die?”

“I’m trying to have a serious conversation here.”

He settles back resignedly. Serious conversations—at least ones where he can’t dramatically collar the emotional angst—aren’t his cup of tea, or rather, his cup of coffee so black and bitter it ought to come with a warning label. “You already know Asra and I had a, uh…liaison, my dearest darling. Are you jealous?” He’s smirking again, unable to keep the conversation’s tone anything less than light and teasing. Or he simply doesn’t want to. 

I get up with a sigh, crawling into his lap to straddle him. He sets the book down and slides his hands over my hips, kissing my throat, but I push him back against the armchair cushions.

“Not until we talk.”

“You have my attention.”

I roll my hips slightly. “I know, I can feel it.”

“What can I say? There’s just something about you.”

I want to peel him like a banana but I control myself and remove his hands from my waist. I grip his long pale throat, pressing my thumbs under the Adam’s apple, hard enough to leave a mark.

He shifts slightly beneath me and coughs, doing that heavy-lidded blush thing he did so often and in the most inappropriate of places. “Not exactly helping the _ situation _ here, my dear.”

I grind into him so that I press hard on the growing weight beneath me, trapping it painfully between us. “Then shut up and answer my questions.” 

He grins. “Yes, Captain.”

Only with effort can I stop myself from melting into him right then and there—

Oh, what the hell.

I hike my skirts up over my hips, reaching down to unbutton his trousers. Sighing, I slip myself down onto his fully-erect cock, relishing the girthy heat inside me. I’m wet enough that we don’t need oil, and he slides in with a obscene squelching sound. 

“That’s more like it, my dear,” he breaths into my neck, fingers of one hand biting down on my arms, the other hand expertly finding its way inside my skirts and locating my clit with practiced ease. I give his earlobe a sharp, painful nip and pull down my bodice so he can lick at my nipples as I rock myself back and forth.

His hot mouth latches onto my nipple and sucks, tongue sliding over the pleasure-giving nub, and I dig my fingers into his hair and come almost instantly, feeling my walls clench around him as if I’m trying to suck him up into me, moaning into his hair as I feel him spurt in turn.

I remain seated on him, his cock warm and wet inside me, letting both our hearts return to normal.

“Was that it?” he asks, giving my breasts one last long lick before tugging my bodice back up modestly. “And, uh, by ‘it’ I mean it seemed like you had something to say, not that ‘it’ was a mere ‘it’—”

“I saw what you did with Asra,” I say, forcing myself to continue as if nothing had happened to break my previous flow. “I saw him force you to your knees—”

“That was just a spell he happened to be performing when I arrived. The rest just, uh, just happened. He saw me kneeling there, pathetic, and…I suppose he was, err, bored…”

I drag my fingers through his hair and tug his head back, same as Asra did that night in the shop, then realize that and let him go. “Do you really believe that, Doctor?”

His good eye widens. “He had it _ planned _?”

I play with the buttons of his shirt. “Julian, my love, he practically invited you over. That stretching routine in the library, his brushing against you, that little aside about your fantasies? Asra never talks like that. You know that.”

“Well—I mean, erm, that page in the medical text _ was _ kind of, uh… _ lurid _ …” He trails off. I know good and well it had detailed various kinds of blood transfusions, and could only imagine the nasty medical instruments splayed out across the pages. “You mean he _ wanted _ me? It wasn’t just spur-of-the-moment?” 

The hope in his voice makes my heart clench. I know whatever twisted thing that existed between them is long over, that Julian belongs wholly to me, so it’s not jealously; but the hope in his voice is just further proof of how Asra damaged him. Even now he has trouble truly believing anyone wants him.

“I’m not saying he thought about it as long as you had,” I say. “I mean, I had another vision where he…” _ Found you annoying _ . _ Wanted nothing to do with you _. “Before that night, he’d made it clear that your interest was not reciprocated. I don’t know what changed, or when. But…” 

“Wait a minute; back up,” he says, blinking. “So from the moment I came into that shop that night, he, uh, wanted me on my knees? Staring up at him? Begging him like some common…common…”

I guess that’s part of the point I’m trying to make, but I’m doing a terrible job of it.

“I didn’t mean it that way,” I say, trying to backtrack. I’ve put so much work into building his shattered self-image up, and now I go and put my big fat foot in my mouth! “I meant that he wanted _ you _ , Julian, and as you _ like _ being…bleeding on your knees…that’s how he had you. I’m sure Asra respected you as a doctor and a person. I didn’t mean to say that he tempted you into his shop that night with the plan to embark on a relationship with you firmly established under his heel—” 

“That witch never respected me.” His hand has slipped off my hip, glancing down. Talking about Asra usually has this effect. “I figured that out, eventually. Don’t look so upset, love. It’s flattering, for you to care so much, don’t get me wrong, but I came to terms with it years ago.”

“I don’t think you did, Julian.”

“Look at who you’re talking to. I get _ off _ on that kind of thing. It’s not a big deal, I swear. If anything, Asra was the best—” He stops. 

My hand is back on his throat, thumb in the sharp hollow between his collarbones, and I give his cock, still inside me, a gentle squeeze. “Best what?”

“I didn’t mean it that way,” he says, a dark flush spreading over his pale cheeks. “I love you, and I never loved him. I loved the _idea_ of him, maybe, back when I thought…thought he might, ah….” _Might_ _care for me in return_. “The idea of someone that cool and collected thinking of _me_ that way meant that I was, uh, worthy, or put together enough to merit it, or, ur, _something_…but, even so…”

“But he would do things I don’t. Push you in ways I won’t.”

He nods, briefly, hair falling over his good eye as if it has a life of its own and knows he can’t bear to look me in the face.

I settle back, rubbing the bruise I’ve left on his throat. This is what I’ve been trying, clumsily, to get at. “Just say it out loud, Julian. Asra was the best s—”

“No, you’ve got it all wrong!” He sits up straight, catching me before I tumble backwards off his narrow lap, his cock popping out of me. He scrambles to tuck it away even though my skirts are still covering both of us. Even after all this time together, I’m still surprised by what does and doesn’t embarrass him. “You know that’s not what I meant! I’d take one time with you over a dozen times with him—”

“Hush, Julian. It’s okay. I already guessed all this myself. And—” I hesitate. “I’ve been thinking a lot about how…I know we get up to some pretty weird things, but I don’t know that I could go as far as he did. Be—_ enough _ for you.”

“You’re already perfect—” he begins, but I clamp my hand over his mouth. He _ mmm _s at the abrupt shushing, shifting his hips slightly. I hook my free hand into his open collar, digging my nails into the skin on his chest.

“Julian,” I say, “what if I could give you a taste of that back? As a gift. For all you’ve given me.” 

He swallows hard, heartbeat quickening under my hand. 

“Magic?” he asks. 

I nod.

“Something creepy and unnatural, no doubt?”

“Something very creepy and unspeakably unnatural.”

He grins and winces at the same time. He’s gotten better about magic, but he’s still uncomfortable around it.

Good thing he likes being uncomfortable. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! Arcana blog @lady-of-the-leeches. Come say hi! Mainly Julian and Lucio with a smattering of Nadia and Muriel and occasional Portia. 
> 
> Comments really appreciated!


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Things do not go as planned.

It takes almost a week to assemble the necessary ingredients.

Several are very rare, others very expensive, but I gather them all eventually, finally trading a set of scrying crystals to a temple in exchange for a small brick of uva ursi incense and obtaining a peacock feather from one of Lucio’s old pets. 

I can ask Asra for some of the ingredients, of course, as I know he has a stock of rare herbs at the Palace, but I can’t risk him figuring out what I need the materials for. 

I visit Julian in his clinic next door as he’s finishing up with his last patient. It’s late, the almost supernaturally large moon floating high above the Palace’s graceful turrets and spires. He works too hard, but that’s the only argument I’ve ever lost with him and I’m not about to start again now.

I stand aside to let a patient out of the door, and Julian grins from behind his paper-strewn desk. “Paying house calls, my dear magician?”

“You’re not that lucky.” I set a mug down beside a stack of files. “Drink this before you come home tonight.”

He sniffs the brew suspiciously. “There’s no…sand in here, is there?”

“Mazelinka’s really scarred you, huh. And if I recall, you thought that soup was the best thing you’d ever had.”

“Well, after an eternity of hardtack on—”

“—that pirate ship, anything would taste good,” I finish for him. Hearing him complain about ship food is always amusing, but I have preparations to make at the shop. I lean over the desk and kiss him, a sweet, soft kiss, something tender before…before the rest of the night starts.

“Wait,” he says. Malak eyes me censoriously from the perch I built for him in the corner. “There’s something, uh, magical in this soup, isn’t there?” 

We’ve already discussed this. He doesn’t want to know when “It” will happen. So, “What?” I say innocently. “Can’t I bring you the soup I slaved over without it being weird?” I put my hand to my forehead. “A loving gesture from a loving heart, snatched from my hands and dashed upon the rocks of distrust—”

“My dear, your idea of slaving over a meal is sticking a slab of beef between two pieces of bread you bought in the market.”

“I’ve made soup before!”

He grins. “Well, you’ve  _ burned _ soup before.”

I drop into a chair and put my sandaled feet up on his desk. “Bold words from a man who once set fire to the kitchen trying to boil water—no! I don’t have time for this.” I scramble to my feet. It’s too easy to sucked into a conversation with him, especially when he has that look one his face that was daring me to either slap or kiss him. Or, knowing him, asking for both. “I’ve got things to do, my love. I’ll see you later.”

“Leaving me to drown in a pile of paperwork? Next time bring me poison.”

I grin at him over my shoulder. “Don’t tempt me.” I hurry back to the shop, nerves returning. I’m not convinced this is a good idea. In fact, I know for certain it’s not. But I remember the startled, eager look on his face when I suggested this whole thing, the combination of uneasiness and anticipation he’s been walking around with all week…

More uneasiness than I would have expected, to be honest, as if he’s also been having doubts. But we made it very clear that if his feelings were to change, he’d tell me.

I cover the shop windows and clean the floor, paying special attention to the backroom. I already fixed it up to be as close as I remember it being to three years ago, which is as far back as I can remember. The skull is back downstairs, and the bundles of unlabeled and untidy, if fragrant, herbs Asra used to strew around the place for no discernable reason. I don’t have any of the strange magical apparatuses I saw in my vision, and I’ve replaced the gauzy pink curtains with green since Julian’s affair with Asra, but I’m able to move the table and stools back to where they were in my vision and I’ve tried everything back as close as I can manage.

Now for the spell.

I draw a pentagram on the table with pink Prankan salt and then, consulting the book for the millionth time, I mix the yew berries, cinchona, valerian root, uva ursi, and the rest of the herbs with seawater in five individual earthenware bowls, mashing each ingredient into fine paste. I place each shallow dish on one point of the pentagram and set the skull in the center—that part’s purely for the aesthetic of it all. 

I recite the preliminaries of the spell and seat myself at the table, taking calming breaths. 

I sit there for perhaps an hour, waiting to hear the good doctor shut the heavy front door of the clinic, a sound that reverberates through the shared wall of shop and the clinic. The air is charged with magic and…is that dread or anticipation?...as I tap my fingers on my knees, shoulders tensed. 

Clang. Footsteps on the cobblestones, and the sound of Julian’s voice as he stops to talk to our neighbor the bagelmonger.

I set fire to the salt. Unnaturally, it catches on fire, not touching the fringed tablecloth but rushing along the lines of pink salt and up over the rims of the clay bowls, devouring the damp herbs within, releasing purple smoke infused with magic.

An invisible hand forces me to my knees as I momentarily fall victim to the magical heaviness in the air, and then I’m back on my feet, light as air, tingling in every pore, heart beating like a hare’s.

I steel myself, move aside the gauzy purple wall coverings, and examine myself in the mirror behind them. 

I was already the same height as Asra, but my skin is now a rich toffee color, my lovely eyes violet and smug, hair white and fluffy. My shoulders are broader, though not by much, and my forearms thicker. Chest covered with well-defined (and magically created, even for Asra!) muscles, but  _ flat _ , my natural breasts gone. My hands larger, hips narrower, and between my legs…

I brush my gray and black trousers with the back of my hand. It feels…not like what a real penis would feel like, I don’t think, not that I would know. More like a surprisingly girthy ghost dick. 

Ghost dick. Despite myself my mind flickers to whether or not Lucio had a dick while in ghost form, then decide that, given the goatishness of it all, it’s perhaps best to let that field lay untilled. 

Either way, Julian will be able to feel it well enough. I made sure of that with the magical brew. 

I slip my hand inside my shirt. I feel the whisper of my breasts but only feel true sensation when I touch my nipples. So that still worked, at least. I run my and up and down my chest a few times, missing the weight of my breasts, and turn away from the mirror before I can get too weirded out. 

_ A bit too late for that, isn’t it?  _

I squeeze my eyes shut and pat myself down quickly as I hear Julian wishing the bagelmonger a hearty goodnight. Everything else seems to feel normal, though the ghostly brush of my vanished waist-length hair on my—Asra’s?—back makes me feel like I do in that fraction of a second before I get unexpectedly tapped on the shoulder. 

A distinctive knock on the front door.

I come out into the main shop, deep purple smoke trailing out around my bare feet. Julian is standing by the counter, fidgeting with those gloves he insists on wearing everywhere. 

“Oh, Ilya,” I say, and my voice—Asra’s voice—raises chills all along the skin that’s not truly mine. “What are you doing here?” 

He stares down at me, biting his lip. I raise my eyebrows, and he swallows and says, just as I remember in my vision, “Asra. Are you…”

And then be begins to cough, knees wobbling as the miasmic energy of my spells press down on him. “Are you fooling around with that hocus pocus of yours?” he chokes out. “The Count wants results, not magic tricks—”

“The Count?” I say coolly, not sure how far he wants to take this charade. 

Julian stumbles and finally drops to his knees under the weight, hands trembling at the oppressive energy. I reach down and remove his eye patch. “What  _ is _ this?” he coughs. “What—what are you doing?” 

“Can’t you tell?” Uncertain of whether or not he’s talking to me or Asra, I look down at him, studying his face closely. Tingles are spreading over the base of my skull as if I have a neck cramp, and for a moment my vision goes blurry…no, not blurry. Everything remains sharply outlined in the thin purple smoke. It’s my perception that’s different, the  _ why _ behind what I’m seeing.

Julian remains kneeling at my feet, head bowed, and I feel a rush of contempt for the man. I slide my hand into his thick red hair and pull his head back to look him in the eyes. They’re large and soft and needy and staring at me as if I’m a beautiful vision that might disappear at any moment.

The idiot—

Not, not an idiot. Why did I think that? 

“Just a magic trick,” I say, smiling thinly, and he swallows hard, sharp Adam’s apple bobbing. I twist my fingers in his hair, tugging it at the root, and shivers roll down his gangly body. A whispery noise escapes his parted lips and I have to fight the urge to laugh in his face.

“S-something from one of those ridiculous tomes?” he asks, trying to keep his voice steady. 

“Something from one of those ridiculous tomes. If you’d like to help, I’m sure I can find a use for you.” I touch Julian’s jaw, turning his head from side to side. An odd feeling is swelling in my gut, a combination of disgust and frustration and lust. 

Not lust, exactly. More like…the need to do something to take myself out of myself…

No. There’s a chance the spell will work….

_ Wait. What spell?  _

I blink, staring down at Julian’s eager face. Those aren’t my thoughts. Those aren’t my feelings. 

“I—will this help?” Julian is stuttering. “If I do this with you, will it…will it change anything?”

As in change Asra’s feelings for him. 

But I choose to misunderstood. 

“I hope so,” I say, turning back towards the backroom. Maybe this will stop Julian from looking at me the way he does at the Palace. Maybe this will assuage my desire to see Julian hurt without truly hurting him—

Not. I  _ love _ Julian—

Another shower of tingles explode over the back of my skull, and I smile to myself as Julian scrambles to his feet, adjusting his rumpled coat. “Er—coming, I’m coming!”

He follows me into the backroom. I gesture at the still-glowing pentagram at the table. 

“Blood. Bone. Sweat and tears. All sorts of things make powerful catalysts for these spells. I wonder…how much are you willing to give up, Ilya?”

“I—uhm, well, that is to say—you know—” Julian swallows, still straining under the heavy energy that fills the room. He bites his lip, looking at me with pathetic eagerness. “…I’ll give you all of me, if that’s what it takes.”

I feel an indulgent twinge of amusement, as if I had just watched a cute kitten throw up on itself. “All of you? Oh, Ilya…for now, I just need your hand.”

Julian extends his arm without hesitation, so fast he nearly knocks over a nearby bottle. 

I trace his lifeline with a light touch, then pick up an ornate ceremonial dagger I had fetched from the display case earlier and cut into Julian’s palm without a twinge of hesitation. 

Blood trickles down onto the table, lighting up the circle in a blaze of gold and orange fire. 

“Is, er. Is that it…?”

I laugh, glancing up at Julian. Julian swallows hard, squirming slightly as the crimson blood runs down his fingers and drips from the tapered tips. I cut too deep, I hadn’t meant to truly hurt him—

“Did you want me to hurt you more?” I hear myself saying. “Because that was all I needed from you, Ilya.”

“Now hold on, I—” Julian looks around, notices the skull in the center of the pentagram, feels the dark aura roiling from the dimming gold flames. “What kind of magic are you getting yourself into, Asra? What did that do?” 

He’s worried about me, genuine concern painting his pale brow He…cares. About me, Asra. There’s a hint of hesitation in his large gray eyes, as if he’s almost afraid of his feelings, as if he knows Asra doesn’t feel as strongly back, but that fear has done nothing to dilute his concern for me, because Julian is the most unselfish person I’ve ever met. 

“Hmmm…I’m not sure,” I say, leaning back, glancing down at the burns the orange flames have left on the tablecloth. “I won’t know until it happens. Perhaps nothing, perhaps…”

A lie. I know the spell failed, my umpteenth failure, and the weight of that knowledge fills me with ice.

Julian seems to sense something is wrong. “Are you putting yourself in danger—?—”

I cut him off by lifting his bloodied hand to my lips, running my tongue along the too-deep cut as he meets my eyes in aroused bewilderment. 

“You’re talking too much, Ilya,” I say, because every word out of his mouth reminds me of what I’m doing, why I’m doing, that She died on his watch—

Not “She,” a faint corner of my mind whispers.  _ Me _ . And I’m doing this for  _ him _ —

His voice catches in his throat. “Th-then just tell me what to do instead.”

“…You’d like that, wouldn’t you?” I press forward, meeting no resistance, and push Julian back against the wall. 

I’ve never seen Julian like this before. He’s shaking all over, desperate, a caricature of himself. “Y-you—Oh my god, yes, I’ll do anything you want, anything at all, whatever you need—”

Need. I—or Asra?—feel a flicker of cold amusement, that even now Julian is thinking of me, of what  _ I _ need, as if even now he can’t imagine not trying to take care of the other person, to be gratified without giving of himself in return. 

“You know I can’t give you everything you want, Ilya,” I say, to appease the faint flicker of conscience sparking somewhere deep within the ice.

Julian slides down to this knees, gazing up at me with hunger in his eyes. I’ve seen that hunger before, but it has always been tempered by something completely absent from the sad, lonely, starving eyes that gaze up at me now. “I’ll take what I can get.”

I laugh, hands sliding roughly into Julian’s hair to pull, and leans down—

This is where the vision ended last time, but now I hear Asra’s words coming out of my mouth, words I have never heard before. 

“Go on,” I whisper into his ear. “Go on, you ridiculous, overgrown worm. Beg me to suck my cock.”

I blink at the sound of my own words—it shouldn’t be a surprise to hear Asra be so blunt, not after with the tang of Julian’s blood still fresh on my tongue, but somehow I had expected the magician to be more…euphemistic, or…not  _ tender _ , obviously not tender, but less…crudely prosaic, less…vulgar. 

“I—p-please, please let me—let give you pleasure—”

“Take it out.”

Fumbling with my trousers, he removes my ghost dick, more solid in his hand than it was in mine. A quick glance downward shows him painfully hard in his dark blue trousers, but I make no move to touch him, and he doesn’t either.

“May I—may I—p-please, let me suck it, let me take you in my mouth!”

“Do it.”

He grips it gently with his cut hand, smearing it with blood, and laps gently at the tip. His hands are warm, his tongue hot. He strokes my length, using his own blood as lube, and although the sensation is not quite all there—it feels like he’s touching me through a blanket—I feel the illusion of a cock hardening, feel myself opening up, my arousal increasing tenfold at the sight of him on his knees, slicking me with his own blood, half of Asra’s cock inside his mouth.

He  _ mmm _ s around it as if it savoring the taste, the vibrations going straight to my core as if the ghostly nerves are awakening for the first time. His head bobs up and down frantically, taking me in all the way to the gentle dusting of white hair at the root, his red curls bouncing, a starving man devouring his last meal, and then he pulls away and looks up at me with eyes half-glazed with pleasure. A thread of saliva connects his reddened mouth to my cock, and I almost climax right then and there. 

His voice is husky. “Asra, I—”

My hand shoots out and clouts the side of his head and, balances as he is on his toes and knees, he falls to the side, hitting his head on the wall, cutting his forehead on a jagged bit of stone. He presses his hand to the wall for support, leaving a smear of blood on the curtains dangling beneath the window.

“Please whom?” I ask dangerously, placing my foot on his throat and shoving him back down so that he’s lying on his back.

“Please—master—” He’s choking, face pink as I press my bare foot down on his windpipe. “Please—please l-let me up so I can finish—please let me make you cum—”

I straddle him, putting all my weight on his chest, and lean forward with one hand on the green velvet stool for balance.

“Shut up,” I say, and I slide forward so that my cock is inside his mouth. 

I grind myself forward, fucking his face in earnest.

He gasps, choking, as I deepthroat him, his long legs folding up behind me. He grasps at my waist as if to shove me away, long thin fingers biting into my flesh as he struggles for air, but he just lies there, throat convulsing around my cock as I move forward, angling my hips at a sharper angle, driving so deeply into his mouth that his eyes bulge with lack of air, face turning a deeper shade of pink.

He makes a pathetic choking sound and I cum at the vibration, my back arching, cum from witnessing his discomfort, his weakness, at the blood smeared around his lips, giving one last hard thrust as I squirt deeply into his throat. I pull out as I finish, splattering his face with cum.

I rise and seat myself on a stool, looking down at him impassively. 

“Clean yourself up,” I order, and he rolls over on his side with a moan. “I said, clean yourself up, you scrawny, useless, pathetic excuse for a doctor!”

He sits up, shaking, and reaches for his handkerchief.

“Lick it.”

He rubs the tears from his eyes. He’s still hard as a rock, I can see the telltale bulge, but the lack of air had squeezed liquid from his eyes. I hope he cries. Another humiliation to relish.

I reach down and jerk at a handful of hair. “Julian—”

He wipes his cheek with the back of his hand, licking his fingers as if they’re covered in custard. The liquid has no tangibility, a mere illusion, but he tries to scrape it off his face and makes a show of pretending to eat it with gusto.

“Good boy,” I say, and he almost cums untouched.

But I’m not finished with him yet. We haven’t had proper ssex in three days—unusual for us, but I’ve been saving up for tonight—and besides, I feel an odd tugging, a feeling of some force outside me planting thoughts and feelings and memories that aren’t my own, compelling me to action I wouldn’t take otherwise.

Julian’s eyes are still half-glaze with lust as he turns them on me, and instinctively feel that this was how that first night with Asra ended, ended with Julian being sent home with strict orders not to touch himself until Asra allowed him to.

“Strip,” I command, just as Asra did on their…I don’t know what encounter. There must have been more than a handful in total, if Julian had a key to the shop. I’m not sure what number I’m experiencing now. It’s long enough for things to have sunk fully in, I think as I watch Julian eagerly fumble with his buttons. Far along enough for Julian to have realized that all Asra wanted from him was a warm body to smack around. But not far along enough for Julian to have given up hope that if he kept on being a good boy, kept begging for it, kept giving Asra everything he wanted…

A brief flash of pity, quickly drowned by lust as Julian kneels naked before me, the moonlight filtering through the curtains turning everything to an eerie green.

“What do you want?” I ask Julian, reaching out a single finger and tilting his sharp chin up at me.

“To please you. To do anything you say.”

“And why do you want to please me?”

“Because I am worthless.”

“What else?”

“Because the only good I can bring to this world is to give pleasure to others.”

“Stand up and tell me how worthless you are.”

Julian rises and stands beside the window, his long pale body beautiful in the eerie light. 

Another flicker of lust. Arousal begins to build again between my legs. 

“And for how long have you been worthless?” I ask, standing beside him, sliding my hand down his bafflingly well-defined stomach muscles and down to his cock. It’s dark and desperate-looking, fully erect, large and flushed and dripping with enough precum to fill a bathtub. He shifts slightly, trembling. 

“For—for—ah!—I don’t know—please don’t—just please don’t—”

_ “You don’t tell me what to do, you incompetent parasite,” _ I say, craning my neck up to bite him on the throat. Not a love bite, not a hickey, a proper bite with teeth. 

He moans, and although I know it’s not possible I could swear his cock grows fatter in my hand.

“I’ve been worthless my entire life,” he almost whimpers as my hand begins to move up and down his slippery shaft. I leave a trail of marks on his neck as he speaks, his voice hopping and skipping like a rock across the surface of a pond. “I—I abandoned my sister, I—I traveled the world but never went home; I knew I’d never be able to leave! And all—all those people I couldn’t save on the battlefield—and then I come here, I lie about myself to get a job, I—I try for—for— _ uh _ !”

“How long have you been trying to cure the plague?” I whisper into his ear, nipping at his earlobe so hard I draw blood.

“Ten months, ten months—please stop, please don’t—”

I dig my nails into his cock, pumping faster, knowing just how much will keep him on the edge of orgasm. “Ten months of failure,” I say. “Ten months of self-loathing, of inhuman experiments, of keeping humans locked in cages like animals, of watching your comrades die in delirious agony, of slicing into their brain tissue, one after the next after the next, like the soulless butcher you are—”

Tears are welling in his eyes now, and he pushes me away and falls to his knees. “No more—please don’t—please stop—”

But he hasn’t said our safe word, and all I feel is contempt for this gangly hack, this mad doctor, this man who, while claiming to bear the weight of the entire Vesuvia on his shoulders, was so distracted, so incompetent, that he allowed me to contract the plague and die.

“At least Her body was burned,” I say, getting down on my knees before him so that I can look him straight in the eye. His cock hangs between his legs, still leaking, but it’s no longer as full as it was and his broad freckled shoulders are shaking with silent tears. “She was one of the lucky ones. She wasn’t sliced open under your scalpel for the amusement of Valdemar, for your own twisted entertainment—”

“That’s not true,” he says, covering his face with his hands. “I enjoyed none of it, it was a nightmare—”

“I see you in the Palace every day! Smiling! Laughing! Joking!”

“No—I have to go on—I have to—it’s all I can do; I can’t crack now—”

I rise. He remains kneeling before me, face hidden, and I place my foot on his shoulder and shove him down on the hard tile floor, watching with satisfaction as he sprawls out on the cold stone.

I remove my shirt, slowly, deliberately, and point at the center of the room.

“Get on your hands and knees, you disgusting, perverted wretch,” I said, and he swallows a moan and crawls over on his hands and knees, crouching there on all fours like the dog he is.

I take a switch from the corner and swish it through the air a few times. We’ve never progressed to switches, Julian and I, so I don’t exactly know what I’m doing.

Good thing Asra does.

Not that safety is uppermost on his mind—our mind— _ my _ mind. 

I bring the switch down without warning on Julian’s back, feeling a hot, lustful rush gush through me as I watch the blood rise from the strip on his back. Julian jerks beneath the lash, then lets his head drop down so his curls are trailing on the floor and steels himself so that his muscles stand taught beneath his fair skin.

I raise my lash and bring it down harder this time, and Julian arches his back and moans shamelessly.

“You wanton little slut, you like this, you repulse me—”

“I deserve it,” he whimpers. “I deserve it—”

I lash at him again and again, covering his back and rear with angry pink and red and purple welts, a beautiful tapestry of pain woven from blood and bruises on his willing flesh.

Euphoria has me in the such a strong grip, the intoxicating feeling of power is so strong, that I barely notice when he stops moaning and shaking.

I come around. He’s staring straight ahead, eyes unfocused. 

I’ve seen that look before, but never with such blind intensity. I go back around to his rear. My ghost dick is at full mast, dripping with the illusion of precum. I smear the cock with blood from his back and, without a second thought, I ram it deep inside his ass without preparation, as the increased friction makes my ghostly appendage feel the sensation better, and as for him—

He twitches at the shock of my entering him and grunts approvingly. I reach over his long bloody back and grab at his hair like someone gripping the reins of a horse and begin thrusting deeply inside him, riding him like dog in heat fucking a female dog, hips pistoning with almost unnaturally jackhammering swiftness, like one of Nadia’s wind-up toys.

A low, rough sound comes deep in his abused throat and he slumps forward on his forearms, ass up. I yank his head back so that his throat is pressing down into the floor and grip his waist. I’m at an awkward angle but still have enough leverage to fuck him open like a goose on a spit, loud squelching noises filling the room as I begrudgingly grab some oil off the table and dribble it inside his hole, not to make things more comfortable for him but to help me thrust even faster, my hips slapping his bony ass as I pound him without stopping.

He’s almost lying on his chest now, his desperately full cock grinding into the floor, and as I give a particularly brutal shove into him he comes with a shout, writhing beneath me like a decapitated snake and shooting out a sticky gush of cum large enough to quench the thirst of a caravan of camels.

I climax at the sight of the cum trickling out from under him, at the sight of the blood dripping down to the mix with it, at the clenching of his ass around my cock, spilling deep inside him with a cry of my own.

I give a few extra thrusts for good measure, enjoying the hypersensitivity of my ghost dick, and pull out, leaning back on my heels. Julian is lying on his side, utterly spent, breathing heavily. His face and chest and ears are flushed with red, lids heavy.

“Lick it up,” I command. “I did not tell you you could cum! Lick it up.”

He stirs slightly, face slack, and then rolls over onto his stomach and laps at the bloody puddle of cum.

“Like a dog in the gutter,” I say, grinding his face down into the pool. “Like a fucking animal eating its own filth—”

He sighs into the floor, licking faster. 

I release his hair, and he flops over on his side, eyes still glazed, cum stuck in his hair and coating his face. 

He lies there for a while, cum drying on his face, unmoving. I sit there and watch him. He knows I’m watching him, knows he’s lying naked on a floor still sticky with his cum and blood, and his dick slowly hardens again.

“Go on,” I say. “Jerk yourself off again, you insatiable pig. Let me watch your shame.”

Fumbling as if in a dream, his hand closes around his cock and he tugs at it roughly, squeezing tighter and tighter until the pain alone make his cum, a nearly dry orgasm this time. 

“You get off on this,” he whispers, face still resting on the tiles. 

“What gave that away?”

“I could be Valerius, for all you care.”

“That lazy drunk?”

“I could be the halva dealer, the baker…anyone.”

“So?”

“All those things you said to me…you meant them.”

“Of course I meant them.”

“I’m nothing to you. I could be anyone…”

“Not just anyone, if you must know, you sentimental idiot. ‘Just anyone’ didn’t let Her die.”

Julian gives a great shudder and goes still, forehead creased, hand resting lightly on his crotch, eyes closed.

“Julian?”

He doesn’t respond.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> All's well that ends (sort of) well.

“Julian?” I cry. “Julian!”

He drags himself up on his hands and knees, then collapses on his side, dark red curls fanned out over the lavender tiles.

I fall to my knees beside him. I’m myself again, the spell broken, thank heaven. “Julian, darling! Look at me!”

His eyes flicker to me at the commanding note in my voice, widening slightly as if afraid he hadn’t obeyed some earlier directive he hadn’t heard, and my heart breaks. 

“Get up,” I order, because that’s the only thing getting through to him. “On your feet, Doctor!” 

He rises, swaying and shivering like we’re in a southern blizzard. I use my magic to put out the candles in the hall sconces, give him some semblance of dignity as he shambles up to our bedroom. 

“Lie down,” I order, and he stretches out on his stomach, still trembling, muscles taunt as if he’s a slave preparing for a whiplash that might fall the next second or never. 

I walk from the room slowly, authoritatively, then break into a run the second the door closes behind me. Malak caws at me, landing on a nearby shelf.

“He’s fine!” I snap. “Don’t look at me that way! Where were you when he’d make ‘house calls’ for Asra? You should’ve pecked his eyes out!” 

Malak caws again.

“Asra’s eyes, not Julian, you dumb bird!”

Malak shuffles in place, head drooping.

“I’m sorry,” I say, reaching up to stroke his wing. “I’m on edge. Just—just go downstairs, okay? I’ll make it right!”

_ “Caw!” _

“Yes, I know I’ll answer to you if I don’t!” 

I bring a water basin, bandages, and a stack of spidersilk towels back to the room, setting them on the bedside table. I take our crystal wedding rings from the drawer and slip them back on, kissing his knuckles as I slide his ring onto his finger. 

I dip a towel in water and dab gently at the blood on his forehead. Some has already dried and I have to scrub at it, smearing the reddish flakes over his porcelain temple like I’m staining him with my own perversion. 

“Don’t,” he mumbles, pushing my hand away. “_ He _ never did that.”

I stop. “He never—” It’s like a knife in my chest to imagine Julian in a heap on the tiles in the backroom, Asra coldly going upstairs to bathe the doctor off of him, Julian, filthy, dragging himself up and, dripping with self-loathing, slinking out into the night. “Julian, Asra never…took care of you after he was done?”

For the first time, Julian seems to notice that we’re in our bed. “And I was never allowed in here, either,” he says, starting. “Trash isn’t allowed upstairs—” He makes as if to roll out of bed, long limbs quivering, and I pin him to the mattress with a kiss. His skin is as cold as it looks. 

“Julian, darling,” I say, taking his hand, “it’s me. Look. It’s me. Your wife. This is our bedroom.”

He blinks fuzzily, hand flopping back down to the sheets when I let go, and for a moment I’m scared of what I’ve done. Then his shoulders relax and he reaches back up to touch my face, hesitating at the last moment as if he’s unsure if he’s _ allowed _. I lean into his touch, kissing his palm, and he gasps slightly, as if my lips burn his skin. 

“Let me take care of you,” I say with as much authority as I can muster. Inside I feel like joining him in a defeated heap on the bed because I love him more than anything and yet I was able to do those things to him, able to _ enjoy _ doing those things to him, and he must sense my desperation because he nods. 

I dip my spidersilk towel into the water and lightly run it over the wounds on his back, feeling a rush of panic as I fully observe the damage I’ve done. I clean the blood away, grateful that only about a third of the blows broke the skin, and pat it dry. We keep a jar of anti-infection ointment in the stand beside the bed, and I take my time rubbing it into his wounds, being sure to be as gentle as possible, no matter what he would have preferred. 

I cut long strips of bandages and make him sit up so I can wrap his broad torso. Normally he’d be teasing me about my technique, playfully chaffing me out of professional pride, but tonight he’s completely silent, scaring me more than anything he could have possibly said. 

“Julian,” I say finally as I clean the last of the blood and fluids off his face, keeping the water warm and clean with my magic, “why would…”

Then I trail off, uncertain of how to put things in words. Besides, I don’t know that he’ll answer me. I dry his skin and toss the towels away, kissing the now-clean spots on his face where his cum had been, purifying them further, then massage his bare limbs, trying to warm him, and help him into his sleep clothes. I cuddle up next to him with his face buried in my shoulder, softly kissing his throat, kissing all the terrible marks I’ve left behind, as if that would heal them. Gently, ever so gently, as if I’m dealing with Inanna for the first time, I begin running my fingers through his sweaty curls, soothing him with a soft, loving rhythm.

“Julian,” I say again when his breathing has grown steady and deep, “_ why _ did you do all that with Asra?” 

I know now is not the best time, but I have to know, I have to understand, because understanding Julian might help me understand what we’d just done, understand how to comfort him. I know Julian thought he had feelings for Asra, had convinced himself that Asra had feelings for him, but still, given the drop I’d just witnessed, after the first few times Julian must have realized that whatever pleasure Asra could give him, it wasn’t worth it. 

I feel a warm tickle against my skin as his breath hitches. “I…I enjoyed it,” he says. “You saw. I _ needed _ it.”

“Nobody needs _ that _ . What you need is someone loving you. And _ that _ was not it.”

“Needed…not the pleasure. The…what comes after. When the pain and pleasure stop and I want to fling myself into an aqueduct. That’s what…made it the best, I think. The…afterward.”

Another stab of pain. “Julian—”

“Your death was my fault,” he says in a low, toneless voice, so unlike his usual lively speech. It’s almost as if someone else is speaking through him, an older version of Julian taking possession of my husband’s body. “You were my friend, my apprentice, my responsibility, and I was too wrapped up in myself to even know you were sick.”

“Julian, you were trying to cure the plague, not off drinking! At least…well, I guess I don’t know what you were doing, but I must have died within a few days. I never blamed you—”

“You would if you had your memories back. Ask Asra. He knew it. _ I _ knew it. Everyone knew! Valdemar used to…they…they knew it was my fault. But still—at first I sought comfort from Asra, I think. Someone who understood how I felt and could help me move past it. Except…” He trails off.

“Except that’s not what he wanted.”

“No. He wanted revenge for his beloved’s death. It’s obvious in hindsight. You heard his words coming out of your mouth just now, only I didn’t really…I didn’t _ want _ to understand it, back then.” The words spill out of him in a therapeutic rush. “That was the only reason he came to the Palace. He didn’t care about the plague. He didn’t care about the people suffering. Not that he wanted them to suffer, but—he’s never been a _ part _ of this world, I don’t think. He floats through it, _ above _ it. Nothing sticks to him. The only thing that was ever real to him were his parents and you, the things that immediately affect him.”

I hate hearing about how Asra and I had been romantic partners before my death. It sounds like a life belonging to someone else who’d borrowed my body for her little escapades, though all I truly know is that he was in love with me, not how far things had gone between us. At this point, I’m too afraid to ask. The thought of Asra touching me now sends chills of revulsion rippling over my skin.

“Not like you care,” I say. “You’re—connected to everyone and everything. It’s one of the things I love about you, Julian.” 

“Asra…was not like that. I felt your death, but then I felt every death. He…it was his own fault, how much your loss gutted him. He walled himself off, and when he lost that one person he had left—” 

“And so he set out to break your heart in revenge?” 

He laughs. “My heart? More like my pride. I wasn’t a total idiot, my dear. I knew he had no deeper feelings for me than—than I have for the toast I ate for breakfast this morning.”

But his voice betrays him, and I extend my thumb to brush his ear, very gently, and tracing the skin around his wedding ring, reminding him that _ I _ had chosen him.

“Looking back, it makes sense,” he says. “Asra knew you might be coming back to life soon. To start anything real with me would be a betrayal of you, cheating on his sleeping sweetheart, even though you were broken up for a year before your death. And so instead of building something new, something real, he took pleasure in making me suffer for what I’d done. I’d have considered it cheating, dead or not, broken up or not,” he adds, after a pause. “But he thought of it as, ah, honoring your memory by hurting me.” His voice is rough, as if he’s fully comprehending the ugliness of their relationship for the first time, though that can’t possibly be true. “His loss, right? He could’ve had all _ this _ every night.” He gestures at his body and wiggles his toes with mock invitation. “Good luck finding a comparably kinky bastard, you white-haired witch.” 

I know Asra, and I know Julian. Even had I never existed, Asra wouldn’t have given Julian the true time of day. But for Julian’s sake I remain silent. 

“Joke’s on him, though,” he says, half-amused, half-disgusted, though which emotion applies to him or to Asra I can’t tell. “Because whatever depths of depravity that kinky bastard plumbed, I was already there with a welcome sign and flower bouquet.”

I slide down to hold Julian’s bony face between my hand. His beautiful, vivacious gray eyes are tired now, the circles beneath them a delicate shade of purplish brown 

“Julian, my love,” I say, kissing the tip of his nose, “you deserve better than what Asra was able to give you.” ** _Did_ ** _ to you _, I want to say, but I can’t bear to pop the little fantasy Julian’s concocted for himself, his desperate belief that Asra would have reciprocated had I been entirely out of the picture. “Asra’s mind was turned by grief. You were still bearing the burdens of an entire city. You can’t rely on either of your impressions of you from back then.”

“I…suppose.”

“But you, Julian, you here right now with me, the changed Julian I know and love, you deserve better. You know that, right? You accept that?”

“Did you…mean the, ur, _ things _ you said to me in the backroom?”

“No. No, of course not. It would appear that part of the spell is that I take on some of the—some of the _ aspects _ of the person whose body I’m wearing…”

“Because…because the things you said weren’t…weren’t wrong.”

“Asra may have thought so at one point, in the depths of his grief and his own guilt, but Julian, we’ve been over this a million times. You helped save the world, for crying out loud! Look me in the eye and ask yourself if I could marry someone as bad as you’ve thought yourself in the past. Who was still that person. Who hadn’t changed and grown.”

His eyes rove over my face, finally settling on mine. “I know,” he says softly, reaching up to take my hand in his. Our wedding bands clink together. A Navivonian custom, the wedding rings, one I embraced wholeheartedly. “I do know it, my dear. You’re too smart to love someone who doesn’t deserve it.”

“And if we are to do something like what we did again…” I raise an eyebrow promptingly. 

His swallows hard. “You mean you’d…”

“Maybe. But if we _ did _ do it…”

“We’d do it with you as yourself,” he mumbles. 

“Exactly.” I know I can’t be as cruel as I was to him while wearing my own skin, but he needs to hear that it’s a possibility, needs to understand that he deserves better than what he had with Asra even if the physical acts appear the same. “And you’ll let me take care of you again afterwards. If you don’t care about yourself, at least care about my not feeling like a monster.”

He nods, though it’s obvious that the melancholy he was chasing earlier is not something he can let go of easily. He’s lived with it, nurtured it, made love to it for over three years—perhaps far longer; he was certainly none too stable by the time the plague swept into Vesuvia—but at least he’s open to it, and that’s all I ask for right now.

I put the lamp out and roll over in the moonlit darkness, wrapping his long arm around me and pressing my back against his broad pale chest. A lump rises in my throat at the touch of the bandages on my back, but his breathing is steady, heart calm. 

“Thank you,” he says after what seems like hours.

I sink deeper into his arms. “Goodnight, Julian.”

He plants a kiss on the side of my neck. His lips are cold, but they warm as they nuzzle against my skin. “Goodnight, my love.”

  
  


* * *

  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! Arcana blog @lady-of-the-leeches. Come say hi! Mainly Julian and Lucio with a smattering of Nadia and Muriel and occasional Portia.


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